[Experience with infection surveillance at a neurological intensive care unit]

Infection-surveillance is an important part of the infection control system serving the protection of patients and healthcare workers as well. The continuous surveillance of health care associated infections is among the most important fields of patient safety and quality management. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of the health care associated infections among patients at the neurointensive care unit. Moreover, we aimed to identify specific infection-forms and the most frequently occurring pathogens. We performed the study for a half-year according to the HELICS-method proposed by the National Center of Epidemiology. In this setup we evaluated the infections and risk factors for infection (instrument-use, antibiotic therapy etc.) among the patients who spent at least 48 hours in the neurointensive care unit. During the six-month period, we observed 16 health care associated mono- and polymicrobial infections out of the 88 cases. Mainly Gram-positive pathogens were identified, but we found multidrug-resistant pathogens as well. Clinically diagnosed pneumonia was the most frequent among the infections. These infections were detected by a relatively low microbiological testing rate, which warns to increase sampling frequency to ensure more accurate data on infections. Infection control based on a comparative standardized infection dataset seems to be one of the most important preventive measures.